Monday's letters

Monday

Dec 27, 2010 at 12:01 AM

Bridge club invites you

Regarding "Bridge a game of life for this enduring club": Another popular duplicate bridge game is The InterCity Bridge Club Inc.

This membership-owned club meets on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. at the Southgate Community Center in Sarasota. The current president, Harriette Buckman, gives an optional lesson before the game. Reservations can be made with Margaret Tominosky, who is a director certified by The American Contract Bridge League. Her cell is 223-3712.

Founded in 1961, we will celebrate InterCity's 50th anniversary next year.

June Plunkett

Member and a former president

Sarasota

Scott the dismantler

Regarding "Scott team's key word: shake-up": There is an old saying: You don't dance with the devil; the devil dances with you.

I just finished reading the proposals by the incoming governor's team for our new and improved Florida. Rick Scott's advisers wish to dismantle everything that made Florida a destination of choice to live.

I just hope all those "informed" citizens, who voted our soon-to-be state representatives into office, enjoy the dance.

Paul Perkins

Rotonda West

Mistaken on 'don't ask'

The U.S. Congress (especially the Senate) has made a big mistake in rescinding the "don't ask, don't tell" regulation regarding homosexuals and lesbians openly serving in our military services. Few in Congress have served in the military, and have little or no knowledge of how the military service operates in peace and wartime.

Two well-qualified senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, one a senior reserve Air Force officer (judge advocate) and the other a senior retired naval officer (pilot/commander), spoke strongly against any change in the regulation. They understand this important issue. Hopefully, the next Congress in 2011 will be able to revoke the law.

As a citizen and a long-serving retired Air Force officer, I speak out against the vote. It will not work, and it will do harm collectively and individually to the majority of our service members.

Jack R. Olsen

Venice

Congress fails on energy

The U.S. Congress extends the OPEC stimulus package into 2011! Congress, by a (non)vote, has chosen to keep sending $365 billion a year ($1 billion a day) to foreign countries that export oil to the United States. According to T. Boone Pickens, America consumes 21 million barrels of oil a day. We import 13 million a day; 5 million comes from OPEC, a cartel of 12 nations that includes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. OPEC will have revenues exceeding $750 billion for 2010, up 32 percent over 2009. OPEC is counting on America to continue the status quo of the stimulus package. The question is: Will the American people continue supporting this stimulus policy and the inability of Congress to pass clean-energy legislation?

Columnist Thomas Friedman has stated that basically our oil payments are cycled through Saudi Arabia and end up funding the very militants whom our soldiers are fighting.

Through the WikiLeak cables, The New York Times and Friedman learned that private Saudi donors still constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.

We need oil and we are dependent on OPEC for our insatiable addiction to it. It is a pusher-addict relationship. The addict won't really sanction the pusher.

A recent letter writer compared purchasing basic insurance coverage with purchasing long-term care coverage. While the two deal with health care, the lack of basic coverage and using a hospital emergency room for medical coverage directly cause rates to rise for those with coverage. A person not purchasing long-term care coverage won't affect the cost of a basic coverage policy. The writer then states, "When did we start living in the type of 'nanny' state where the government uses its authority to force citizens to make only 'responsible' choices?"

The simple answer is: When the government enacts speed limits, air-traffic regulations, food safety and decency standards, and, yes, health care standards -- and enforces those limits and standards. When a person's actions or inactions have no effect on anybody else or on others' property, then that person should be free to make those choices. Example: By choosing not to buy extended coverage on my TV, I won't add to the cost of someone who buys the coverage. This is an inconvenient fact.

Larry Basta

Venice

Renewables drain taxes

The Cancun climate conference ended in the usual last-minute, so-called deal with no details, this time to transfer $100 billion a year by 2020 from developed countries to underdeveloped countries. In reality, this is just a big wealth-transfer boondoogle. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and that agreement obligates only wealthy nations to reduce carbon emissions, with some big emitters not signed.

T. Boone Pickens is stuck with hundreds of wind turbines; he finally realized that wind farms, even with generous subsidies, are not competitive with natural gas.

It is time to stop wasting taxpayers' money on renewables (corn ethanol, and unreliable wind and solar) until they can be competitive -- without subsidies -- with abundant, reliable U.S. natural gas.

Charles Luger

Siesta Key

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